The Securities and Exchange Commission yesterday ordered Pinthongta and Panthongtae Shina-watra to clarify within seven days their relationship with Ample Rich Investments Ltd through which they admitted to having held stocks of Shin Corp before the takeover deal of the family company.

“The SEC has found that Panthongtae and Pinthongta held stocks of Shin Corp through Ample Rich [before the takeover deal]. This fact has aroused suspicion as to when the two established financial relationships with Ample Rich and whether they had ever made proper disclosures about their holdings or their tender of [Shin stocks],” the SEC said in a statement.

Yesterday Pinthongta and Panthongtae rushed to repair the damage created on January 23 by what they said was a “technical error” in their filings of transactions entailing 329,200,000 shares of Shin Corp.

Ample Rich, which until January 20 had held the same number of shares (accounting for 10.98 per cent in Shin Corp), is a nominal company registered on the British tax haven of the Virgin Islands. It was set up by Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra on 12 April 2000.

Acting on behalf of both Ample Rich as seller and Pinthongta

and Panthongtae as buyers, Karnjanapha Honghern, a secretary of Khunying Pojamarn Shinawatra, informed the SEC on January 23 that Ample Rich had sold 164,600,000 shares of Shin Corp to each of two children of the prime minister.

Karnjanapha said Pinthongta and Panthongtae had bought the Shin Corp shares at Bt1 apiece from Ample Rich on January 20 and that the transactions had taken place on the Stock Exchange.

The following Monday, Pinthongta sold a total of 604,600,000 shares, compared with 458,550,220 shares for Panthongtae, to Temasek Holdings of Singapore at Bt49.25 a share as part of a Bt73.2 billion takeover deal of Shin Corp. The transaction aroused suspicions about whether the two Shinawatra heirs had violated insider trading regulations and whether Ample Rich Ltd had belonged to the Shinawatra/Damapong family all along. Thaksin’s own disclosure of his assets, as required by the Constitution, never listed Ample Rich.

The Shinawatra/Damapong families effectively sold 1,487,740,120 shares (or 49.61 per cent of Shin Corp) to two nominees of Temasek in the largest takeover deal in Thai corporate history.

Yet after the deal had been sealed, it emerged that Ample Rich could not have sold its Shin Corp shares to Panthongtae and Pinthongta through the Thai Stock Exchange because the exchange had no record of the transactions. This prompted the SEC to launch an investigation into the questionable filing.

Last week Kittiratt Na Ranong, president of the Stock Exchange of Thailand, confirmed that the transaction had not taken place on the stock exchange. “You have to ask the SEC for further clarification,” he told Prachachart Thurakit newspaper.

Chalee Chanthanayingyong, as-sistant secretary-general of the SEC, yesterday ruled out any violation of insider trading regulations on the part of Pinthongta and Panthongtae, since Ample Rich had been established as “an entity identified in Article 258 of the securities law”.

This means that Ample Rich belongs to the same financial group as Pinthongta and Panthongtae and therefore insider trading could be ruled out.

But a key question, raised by the SEC, remains: When did Pinthongta and Panthongtae established relations with Ample Rich? The two informed the SEC that they had held Shin stocks through Ample Rich before the takeover deal.

Finance Minister Thanong Bidaya sought to play down the Ample Rich affair.

He said the SEC would need time to gather information before it was able to explain all matters, including alleged insider trading and share transactions involving Ample Rich.

He said that as far as he knew the transactions had been legal and had not breached any regulations.

Thaksin transferred 11.88 per cent of his Shin Corp stocks to Ample Rich in June 11, 1999 ahead of his plan to enter politics full time.

The SEC, according to an article in Matichon newspaper yesterday, found out that Thaksin had owned Ample Rich until November 30, 2000, when newspapers had been investigating his alleged attempts to conceal some of his vast assets.

Shortly after becoming prime minister in 2001, Thaksin spent much of his time defending himself against an indictment in the Constitution Court over allegations that he had concealed his assets.